


Mercy of the Fallen (the AirDrop Security Update 2.0)

by pocky_slash



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Canon Disabled Character, Community - Freeform, First Meetings, M/M, Mutant Politics, Remix, Social Services
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 21:55:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1565411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocky_slash/pseuds/pocky_slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik Lehnsherr feels defined by his past sins and after years of acting against his own moral compass, he's finally struck out on his own. He's his own boss now, and determined to work hard to help the mutant community and make up for years of doing someone else's dirty work. </p><p>Complicating this is Charles Xavier, mutant advocate, genetics professor, unfairly attractive telepath, and owner of the coffee shop below Erik's office. Erik may not think he deserves to be a part of the community he's thrown himself into helping, but Charles has other ideas on the matter, and he's determined to do everything in his power to make Erik see himself as a force for good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mercy of the Fallen (the AirDrop Security Update 2.0)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [velvetcadence](https://archiveofourown.org/users/velvetcadence/gifts).
  * Inspired by [AirDrop](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1005195) by [velvetcadence](https://archiveofourown.org/users/velvetcadence/pseuds/velvetcadence). 



> After reading the original, my thought process for this went, "What if they were adults and bad at technology?" and spiraled into...this. Still a meet-cute at a coffee shop, but with a mutant rights flavor ;)
> 
> Thanks, as always, to my awesome beta readers and everyone who encouraged this story and laughed in my face when I explained the concept to them. I am a parody of myself. Please forgive any errors with the actual AirDrop process--my MacBook is so old it doesn't have that feature, so I had to do some extensive googling :) 
> 
> Some setting-specific notes: "The T" is the name for the Boston subway/trolley system, the buses (and the T) really do stop running around midnight, "Camberville" is local slang for the large parts of Somerville and Cambridge that blur together into one (hipster-filled) town, Patriot's Day/Marathon Monday is a state holiday on which the Boston Marathon is run, and there really is a coffee shop on Bow Street in Somerville, though it doesn't have free wifi and the inside looks slightly different than I've described it here.
> 
> Also, upon further reading, this suffers a lot from the acronym alphabet soup of my day job. DCF = Department of Children and Families; DYS = Department of Youth Services; DMH = Department of Mental Health; MassHealth = the expanded Medicaid program in Massachusetts.

When Erik left Frost, Leland, and Pierce, his grand plan was to set up an office and offer mutant support services in Boston. His bank account was well-padded from two years of doing the firm's dirty work and he'd won a substantial amount of grant money from proposals he'd put together while staying late in the office after hours. It was all he talked about for the two years he was investigating cases and breaking the law for a bunch of rich mutants who cared more about making a buck than doing what was right. He had a goal, his goal was noble, his work wasn't, but he was working to attain that goal, so he could still mostly look his mother in the eye on his visits home to New York.

Plus, any questionable things he did for Frost and her partners...well. They didn't hold a candle to the work he had done for Shaw. 

His plan changed slightly when the time came to put it into action. Real estate in Boston being what it was, he set his sights a little lower and began searching for office space in Cambridge. After two weeks of fruitlessly searching, he accepted that Cambridge was gentrified to hell, and that's how he's ended up here, staring up at the empty space for rent above 11 Bow Street in Somerville. The downstairs is a coffee shop, its windows open wide to catch the last nice day of autumn before the days turn cold, and there's a patio off to the right with a dog bowl and some picnic tables. The steps up to the second floor are in the patio area and not as close to the street as he'd like, and he'd really wanted to rent somewhere closer to the T, but the small inconveniences are worth it both for the price and because of the small print in the rental ad that stressed that mutant tenants were welcome and encouraged.

There's a young black man sitting on one of the picnic tables, and he flips his sunglasses up on top of his head when Erik approaches, jumping down onto the pavement.

"You Erik Lehnsherr?" he asks, and Erik nods. "Armando Munoz. I'm your maintenance guy."

"Nice to meet you," Erik says, and they shake, after which Armando gestures towards the stairs.

"Why don't we go take another look and then, as long as everything is okay, you can sign the papers?"

"Sounds good," Erik says, and follows Armando up the stairs to the door of his new office.

The space is large and roomy, with windows facing the street and along the wall looking down onto the patio. There are three doors against the far wall, all open. Two are offices and the middle is a closet. On the far right is a small hallway.

"Bathroom down there," Armando says. "Also the elevator."

"I was going to ask about that," Erik says. "I saw it in the ad."

"The entrance is out on the patio, all the way down in the corner, away from the street," Armando says. "It's not the most obvious place, but it has to go down to the basement, too, so that's where it had to go." 

"Basement?" Erik asks.

"Of the coffee shop," Armando says. "That's where they roast the beans."

Erik refrains from asking Armando why he would possibly need to know that information.

He investigates the offices again and then peers down the hallway, walking slowly through the whole office, looking for any damages or anything else that he might get charged for later if he doesn't point it out now. Armando follows him at a distance, looking uninterested but not impatient.

"So," he says, as Erik leans over to inspect the baseboard molding in one corner. "What exactly does an office of mutant support services do?"

"Anything anyone needs," Erik says, standing up again and turning to look at Armando again. He doesn't have a visible mutation, but it's only about 22% of the mutant population that does. The ad said mutants were welcome and encouraged, and Erik doubts the landlord would hire a mutantphobic super if that's truly the case. "I'll help people navigate the Department of Mutant Services, Department of Youth Services, Department of Children and Families, MassHealth--whatever they need. I'll advocate for them and I'll make sure they know their rights. I'll connect them to pro-mutant aid organizations and classes and job postings, I'll make sure their kids aren't being mistreated in school. If someone gets fired and they think there wasn't just cause, I'll investigate it and make sure they know their rights. That sort of thing."

He pauses and adds, haltingly, "I think. I...haven't really started yet."

Armando grins. "I think you're gonna fit in here just fine," he says. He rolls his shoulders and suddenly armored plates are rippling across his skin. He rolls them again, and he's back to normal.

Erik smiles too. "Is it protective?" he asks.

"Something like that," Armando says. "I can adapt to anything. Armor when something is attacking me, gills when I'm under water, that sort of thing. I can survive extreme cold and extreme heat and I once went without breathing for almost an hour before my boyfriend freaked out and made me stop. What about you?"

The empty room doesn't provide too much to work with, but Erik is always prepared. The contents of his pockets--loose change, the washers and nuts he always absently carries with him, his keys, his phone, his pocket leatherman--float out and hover in the air between them.

"Awesome," Armando says. "Telekinetic?"

"I can manipulate magnetic fields," Erik says. "I can do nearly anything with ferrous metals and even alloys with just trace amounts of it, but it goes beyond ferromagnetism."

"Very cool," Armando says, and Erik returns the metal to his pockets and tries not to smirk. 

They do one more loop of the office and then return to the front, where Armando had placed his bag. He pulls out a folder and a pen.

"Rent's due on the first," he says. "Utilities are on your own. Breaker box is in the basement, but don't try anything funny if you don't know what you're doing. I live around the corner, my cell's on your copy of the lease."

"And I make the checks out to you too?" Erik asks, taking the papers Armando offers him and glancing at them.

"I'm just the super," Armando says. "The check's made out to the landlord. Or, well, to his company."

 _Checks are payable to The Coffee Gene, Ltd_ it says, and Erik refrains from groaning at the name, just as he had the first time he came by to scope out the location.

"He owns the coffee shop too?" Erik asks unnecessarily, and Armando nods. 

"The whole building," he says. "You'll see him around. You can't miss him. Just don't let him touch anything electrical either, believe me."

"I'll keep that in mind," Erik says. Armando hands him the pen and he peruses the papers once more--he'd already read the PDFs Armando sent him earlier in the week--and then signs. Armando grins at him and offers his hand.

"Welcome to your new office, man," he says. 

Erik looks around at the space, at the street below, and can't help but feel like after so many years under Shaw's thumb and the last two trying to scrape together enough to get by, he's finally taking steps to do some good in the world. He's finally in a position to help the mutant community, to make his time, his _life_ worthwhile.

"Thank you," Erik says, and he grins back as he shakes Armando's hand.

***

It's early on Friday morning when Erik arrives at the office, his car jammed with boxes. It's so early, in fact, that the coffee shop isn't open yet and the row of metered parking spaces out front is entirely empty. He backs his car in and takes the stairs up to his new office, a box tucked under each arm. He's sourced some second-hand office furniture, but it won't be ready for pick-up until Monday, which is the same day his phone and internet are supposed to be installed. Until then, it's him, his crates of materials and files--reference documents accumulated over years of research and his own hard-won bureaucratic battles--a card table, and a folding chair.

It takes four trips to get all of his boxes, his flimsy card table, and his Ikea folding chairs up to the office, and he's sweating by the time he finishes. He makes a note to bring a dolly when he moves the rest of his things in--he won't feel as silly taking the elevator one flight if he has a dolly stacked with boxes. He wishes there was more metal in the boxes, enough to make his ability the least bit useful. At least the furniture should have enough nails to assist in moving it.

He sits sprawled on a folding chair, leaning over the table. His laptop is set on top of it, and he had high hopes of making the first of his outreach calls on his cellphone, but first he needs to catch his breath and maybe get something to drink. The coffee shop probably charges four dollars for a bottle of water and even the elevator seems like too much work, so he's left shaking a ceramic mug with washers taped to the bottom out of one of his boxes and floating it down the hallway to the kitchenette--really just a fridge, microwave, and sink. Lukewarm tapwater is going to have to do for the moment.

He plans his day out while he sips his stale water. He should probably hold off on the outreach calls until at least nine am. Maybe he can start by organizing his files, then tweaking some of his fliers and business cards. He has a relatively small printing budget, but there's a mutant-run copy shop in Inman Square that might give him a discount if the right people are working when he stops by. Then outreach calls, then maybe some personal visits to a few of the mutant businesses in Somerville to sniff out leads on clientele. Home, dinner, and bed early so he can get a jump start on rounding up more office supplies and furniture on Monday morning.

He wants to be fully operational by Tuesday. Moira MacTaggert at Mutant Services had laughed in his face when he told her that last week, but he's confident he can manage.

Organizing his files goes quickly, after which he sketches a quick layout of what he'd like the office to look like once he gets the furniture he has coming. He spends a good hour making a weekend to-do list, then three weeks' worth of weekly to-do lists, then a list of what he'd like done by the end of the month. When he finishes that, just before nine o'clock, he opens his laptop to add them to his calendar. 

He'll have to go downstairs to get the wifi password for the coffee shop, of course, and probably order a coffee in the name of playing the good neighbor and justifying his use of the wifi, but until then--

He stops that thought abruptly when a system message pops up on his MacBook.

_None of your preferred networks are available._

That's not the surprising part, of course. His computer automatically detects wifi, after all. What's conspicuous is that in the midst of a dozen locked networks with names ranging from factory defaults to all caps inside jokes is _The Coffee Gene - Free WiFi_.

It's unlocked, which is surprising in this day and age, especially for a business.

He waits exactly ten seconds before clicking on it and watching his computer connect at full signal strength.

He absolutely doesn't feel like a guilty mooch.

Not at all.

And why should he? It's not his fault the owner of the coffee shop is just giving away his wifi. It's probably full of hackers and ne'er do wells and...internet bad news. It won't be on Erik's head if someone uses the open network to do terrible things to the electronic records of a coffee shop with a stupid punny name. It's not on Erik if some techie lashes out over bad service and sets up a spam attack on the unsecured network, or if some dumb college kid pirates a movie and the coffee shop gets hit with a fine, or if the connection slows to a snail's pace. Not to mention all the legal troubles that having unlocked wifi opens you up to.

He manages to go twenty minutes before he sighs and abandons his laptop and stomps downstairs to the coffee shop, fuming.

He's not actually been in the coffee shop before. It's...different than he imagined. He knows it's converted from an old bank, so he expected dark brick and steel. Instead it's bright and airy. There are light wood tables and brushed aluminium chairs dotted across the floor, with comfortable arm chairs clustered in some corners. He can see the door to what was once the bank vault hanging open, with more bright wood tables now inside of it. There's art on the walls and sun streaming in from the windows. The food prep area is open air against the far wall, surrounded by low counters, with plenty of space between them and the center island filled with machines and plates stacked over shelving filled with various coffee and cafe accoutrements. It takes him only a moment to discover the reasoning behind the lower-than-usual counters and the ample space--the man currently wiping the counter down is in a wheelchair.

He looks oddly familiar, but Erik can't place him.

"Are you the manager? Or something?" Erik asks gruffly.

"Or something," the man says. He has an incongruous British accent, though it shouldn't be so incongruous. It's Boston, after all--not even Boston, but Camberville. He hates the portmanteau himself, but he can't pretend that it's not an accurate descriptor for the wall-to-wall students and young business professionals and hipster parents that clutter the sidewalks with their bikes and spend their weekends buying locally grown produce at farmer's markets in skinny jeans and ugly sweaters. Boston is the new it-city for young people from all over the world, it seems. These days it's just as common to hear a foreign accent as the invisible r's and drawn out a's of a Boston one.

"You have unsecured wifi," Erik says.

The man blinks at him.

"Yes," he says. "I do." He tilts his head slightly to the side, as if he's taking Erik in, then leaves the rag on the counter and rolls over to the coffee machine.

"That's a terrible idea for a multitude of reasons," Erik says. "You have absolutely zero control over who's using it, what they're doing, and no way to track them or protect yourself if they're doing something they shouldn't be. You're opening yourself up to all sorts of cyber attacks that could hurt your systems and your business, you're putting your customers at risk, and you're probably bogging down your connection so much it's practically glacial. _No one_ has unsecured wifi anymore--having a password at the counter or on a chalkboard is barely better, but it's still at least _some_ protection from the assholes out there who are going to mine your private data for their own amusement."

The man hasn't further acknowledged Erik since his rant started. Erik can't help but feel a bit disgruntled at that.

"I'm being serious," Erik says.

"I absolutely believe you are," the man says. "And while I'm touched at your concern, I care more about ensuring everyone has access if they need it than I do about slow connection speeds and exceeding my bandwidth." He turns back to Erik and smiles. It's...more attractive than Erik is willing to admit.

"And of course," he continues, "all of our actual business is done on a private network. The public wifi is only for customers, so our sales information and private data is safe."

"But," Erik says, struggling to make it clear why that is the stupidest thing he's ever heard. "Anyone off the street can use it."

"If they need it that badly and they can't come in and ask, I'd rather they have access to it," the man says. "There are enough upstanding citizens like yourself who buy guilt-lattes before logging on that I'm not concerned about making up the cost."

Erik scowls. "I don't buy guilt-lattes," he mutters.

"I know your type," the man says. He smiles again and slides a paper cup across the table.

"What's this?" Erik asks, picking it up and looking at it dubiously.

"Black coffee, medium dark roast, a little bit of a cinnamon," the man says. "It's for you."

"How did you--" Erik starts to ask, then shuts his mouth. The man still looks strangely familiar to him. "Do I know you?"

"I don't believe we've met personally yet, no," the man says. He offers Erik his hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Lehnsherr. My name is Charles Xavier. I'm renting you the upstairs office."

"You?" Erik says. "You're the landlord."

"Yes," Xavier says. "I assumed Armando told you I own the coffee shop as well."

"He did," Erik says. "But I assumed that meant you had other people to do the dirty work."

Xavier flashes him a smile.

"I like to get my hands dirty, sometimes," he says.

Something about that look, the smile, his profile, and the name all coalesces at once.

"Wait," Erik says. "Charles Xavier. Not Dr. Charles Xavier?"

Even as he says it, eyebrows raised in disbelief, he knows it's true. He recognizes him now, from the keynote address at MassHealth Mutant Outreach Symposium, from a panel at the Harvard Mutant Consortium. The voice and the babyface with the wicked grin and the wheelchair.

"Yes," Xavier says. "You're familiar with my work, then?"

 _Everyone_ is familiar with Dr. Charles Xavier. At least, everyone in the mutant community, both the scientists and the social activists. He does speaking engagements all over the world. His papers are some of the most frequently quoted in the field. Even the people who hate his naive handwaving of mutant-human integration issues--he claims it's useless to stress over something that will be moot in ten, twenty years when there are more mutants born than humans--begrudgingly admit his continuing scientific discourse is much-needed and paving the way for a better understanding of mutant biology.

Erik nods.

"I'm--trying to start up a mutant support agency," he says. He tries not to sound embarrassed. Mutant support agencies are an idea that was born in one of Xavier's social manifestos. 

"I know!" Xavier says, delighted. "I always try to rent to mutants if I can, but I was particularly eager to see your application! I'm utterly thrilled to be sharing space with you."

"Uh," Erik says.

"Your coffee's getting cold," Xavier says.

"Uh," Erik says again, and raises it to his mouth automatically. It's still hot, but not scalding, and it's probably the best coffee he's had in weeks.

The door to the coffee shop swings open, saving Erik from further embarrassment, and three hipsters come in, already talking amongst themselves.

"Sean, you're late," Xavier says chiddingly. "And Kitty, Illyana, the usual?"

"Yes, please, professor!" one of the girls says, grinning.

"If you'll excuse me," Xavier says to Erik. "I need to get back to work. I'm so looking forward to seeing you around."

"Sure," Erik says, and then leaves before he can make a further ass out of himself.

He breathes deeply as he climbs the steps back to his office. He needs to calm down. There's no need to panic. Sure, Xavier is brilliant and seems to be simultaneously teaching, performing speaking engagements, and running a coffee shop, and sure he's young and attractive and possibly flirting with Erik, but that doesn't change anything. It doesn't change Erik's goals, it doesn't change his opinions on Xavier's more naive, human-friendly social policies, and it certainly doesn't change the month of painstakingly planned to-do lists.

Xavier is just his landlord. They're not friends. They're not even colleagues. There's no need to get starstruck. There's no need to let anything distract him from what he needs to do--make the world a better place for mutants by helping them navigate the complex mutant social services world. He probably won't even see Xavier. Erik needs to put him out of his head entirely, put his nose to the grindstone, and get to work.

***

It's _impossible_ to put Xavier out of his head.

For one thing, the man is _everywhere_. He's speaking at conferences that Erik looks up, his name is littered throughout the journals and articles Erik reads, and he's _always_ in the coffee shop.

"I only teach one class right now," he explains when Erik sputters something about teacher's hours. "Wednesdays, from 9-12 - Eukaryotic Chromosome Structure and Function. I usually do more over the summer, free workshops and things like that. But I started this place about seven years ago and it turns out I quite like running a coffee shop. More, even, than being a professor."

He spends about two weeks being frustratingly awkward everytime he sees Xavier, muttering comments and vaguely intimidated out of making eye contact. Sometime on the third Saturday night Erik spends in his office, late in the evening while the two of them are arguing over Senator Kelly's latest scaretactic bill, the intimidation and the nerves melt away. Xavier becomes Charles, who's too annoying and relentlessly cheerful and good-natured to be put on a pedestal. He drives Erik crazy, and instead of being angry that someone he's looked up to is an occasionally pompous, always arrogant, irritating do-gooder, Erik is mostly surprised to find he's enjoying Charles as a person much more than he ever did as a figurehead.

Which of course, means he's spending even more time down in the coffee shop.

He justifies it by telling himself there's no real room for a coffee maker in his tiny office kitchenette, and the coffee at the Coffee Gene is better than anything he could make on his own. Besides, more often than not, he doesn't even have to pay for it. He'll go down to ask a question of Charles, to get a muffin or a sandwich, to use the elevator to transport something, and before he even realizes it, there's a coffee being pressed into his hands.

It's something different every time, and always exactly what he needs. He would accuse Charles of reading his mind, except the drinks are always things he never knew existed and would never even think to ask for. It's like Charles has some bizarre coffee sensory abilities.

The other way he justifies the amount of time he spends in the coffee shop is that it's the opposite of bad for business. The Coffee Gene seems to be an informal mutant meeting place. It's always teeming with teenagers and twenty somethings and college students and young professionals and artist types and families, some of whom have visible mutations, some of whom are wearing M-pride pins, and some of whom he overhears talking to Charles about tips and tricks he's given them about mastering their abilities. A big part of being valuable to the community is understand what it needs and how it runs. Sitting in the cafe and having lunch while he eavesdrops on local business owners complaining to Charles about their superhuman insurance premiums keeps him abreast of what the community's priorities are, and hearing Charles give advice sparks ideas in his head that he wouldn't have otherwise.

"I'm not trying to steal your ideas," Erik says one afternoon when Charles catches him taking notes on a conversation he's having with a teenage girl facing expulsion because she has too many mutation-related absences from school. "It just...occurs to me that you're a resource I should be using."

"I am," Charles says. "And I would never look at it as stealing. These are loopholes and techniques and laws that exist to protect us, but that aren't publicized. They need to be. Tell everyone. Help as many people as you can. And always feel free to ask me any questions you might have. I've been a part of this community since I was sixteen years old and I'm eager to share that knowledge however I can."

He's really an invaluable resource. Erik thought he knew what he was doing, knew enough from his time in the system and his time working the system, but there are still questions that stymie him, still bureaucrats who don't see sense, still archaic rules that need to be followed. He finds himself coming into his office at the first light of dawn and staying some nights nearly until the buses stop running. Still, at the end of the day, he feels good. He feels like maybe he's actually making a difference. Maybe he's proving Shaw wrong.

He remembers that last fight, remembers Shaw hanging out the office window, shouting at him.

"You're letting your race down, Erik!" he'd bellowed. "You're turning your back on your fellow mutants! I never thought I'd see the day where you would let the humans win just because you didn't want to get your hands dirty. Erik Lehnsherr--abandoning the cause. You'll be swallowed up into faceless bureaucracy. You'll be one of them--a cog in the system that's disenfranchising your brothers and sisters."

He knew then like he knows now that there are ways to help that still allow him to sleep at night. There have to be. And he might not be getting much sleep yet, but he's not stealing, cheating, or hurting anyone, either. And he thinks he's helping. 

He hopes he's helping.

"You look miles away," Charles says to him, bringing him back to the present and away from his memories of Shaw. He slides a mug across the counter--magenta with a bright purple steel rim and handle and officially Erik's whenever he's in the shop, so ordered by Charles' sister and part-time barista Raven, not for its atrocious color scheme, but because of the metal.

If nothing else, his tepid social circle has expanded enormously since setting up shop above The Coffee Gene.

"What is this?" he asks Charles, even as he's raising it to his lips.

"London Fog," he says. "Earl grey, steamed milk, vanilla, and lavender. It's late. You should drink it and go home."

Erik looks around. Raven is wiping down a counter. Sean is loading the dishwasher. The shop is nearly empty, except for two college students on laptops in the corner and an older woman reading a book. He'd come down earlier to ask Charles a question and had a sandwich shoved at him. He must have lost track of time.

The drink is delicious.

"I'm not done working," Erik says.

"The work will keep overnight," Charles says. "You always stay too late. I can feel you up there when I leave for the night."

"I've got a forty-eight year old man who was a ward of his mother because he'd gotten into trouble too many times as a kid with his pyrokinesis. They're threatening to make him a ward of the state now that his mother is on her deathbed, even though he hasn't had an incident in ten years," Erik says. Charles pauses in fussing with the iMac that serves as the register and peers at Erik.

"Interesting," he murmurs, and holds out his hand. Erik passes him the file and takes another long drink from his mug.

He just manages to make the last bus home, but it's after three hours of research and planning that looks like it's going to come down in his client's favor.

He's exhausted, but he smiles all the way home.

***

There are different levels of exhausting. There's the work that's exhausting and then there's...the rest of it. Smiling. Being kind to his clients, being careful not to take his temper at the system out on them. Working hard to keep from burning his bridges, even the ones he wants to burn. Emma Frost, for all she's as cold as her secondary mutation makes her seem, warned him against Shaw and then took him in when he finally broke away. She drives him mad, but she's always willing to look at the occasional mutant case pro-bono if he asks her to. Moira MacTaggert in the Department of Mutant Services is a human and a pest, but she's on his side and she does a lot of things for him he doesn't think her bosses would approve of. More than that, she's the person who finally helped him realize that Shaw's way wasn't the right way, and he can never do enough to repay her for that.

It's hard being grateful, asking for help, not taking advantage or shouting. He's not doing too badly, though.

Then there's a whole other kind of exhausting--there's Charles-exhausting.

It takes Charles a matter of days to make his way under Erik's skin. Charles is brilliant and funny and irritating as hell whenever they start talking about the bigger picture of mutant politics, but even when he's being obtuse, he's still disorienting. The pedestal Charles, the Dr. Charles F. Xavier in his textbooks and journal articles, was a distant figure too far away to touch. This Charles, the one who runs the Coffee Gene and makes Erik strange coffee concoctions and sits with him to talk about anything and everything--he's dangerous. He's too close, too easy to get lost in. The way he smiles, the color of his eyes, the slant of his mouth and the red of his lips--Erik knows he has it bad, knows his brain is spending altogether too much time thinking about what it would be like to kiss Charles quiet when he starts going on about human tolerance and integrated society and Erik just wants him to shut up. 

He's here to work, not to get tied up in an adolescent crush with someone who's out of his league to begin with. The work is tiring enough without adding the constant exhaustion of forcing himself not to bridge the ever-shrinking gap between the two of them by reaching out and taking Charles' hand.

***

The ugly pink and purple mug, of course, means that Erik is a regular. Regulars have mugs. Regulars have their regular seats--Erik's is at the counter, near the register when Charles is working and flopped onto the enormous loveseat in the back when he's not. He imagines most of the regulars have regular orders, though Erik mostly just drinks whatever Charles hands him. Regulars always know everyone's names.

Erik didn't imagine he'd be making friends once he started out on his own. He figured he'd be so bogged down with work he wouldn't get to know anyone except his clients. He didn't expect to be working above the most popular mutant hangout in Somerville, however, and he's adjusted accordingly. He knows the names of all of the staff people--Raven, of course, and perpetually late and immature Sean, Jean the education major, Ororo the political activist, Armando the handyman, and highschooler Bobby, among others. More than just the staff people, though, Erik starts to recognize the faces of the other regulars. The first few he knows because he'd helped them--Charles referred them up to him with problems, and he now he finds himself awkwardly waving when he stops downstairs to yell at Charles in frustration over Section 8 housing. 

It's not long before he starts to recognize people just from being in the shop as often as they are: the group of girls who meet on Friday evenings after work, sitting in the former vault to shield the rest of the shop from their laughter; the two high school girls who come in before school every day and get mochas; the man who spends every lunch in one of the armchairs reading a book; the boys who play dungeons and dragons on Thursday afternoons. The places fills up with familiar faces. He doesn't necessarily know anyone's names--they're not friends--but it's strangely comforting, being able to rely on their presence, like clockwork.

They're mostly mutants, he knows. That makes it even more comforting.

"This eviction case is driving me to drink," Erik mutters as he stirs the drink Charles has just set down in front of him. Based on the smell, he thinks it's hot chocolate.

"Oh, we can't have that," Charles says, leaning his elbows on the counter. "It's much better when _fun_ things drive you to drink." Something about his smile and the way he leans forward makes Erik wonder if Charles isn't flirting with him, but Charles sort of flirts with anyone, and anyway, that's not the current point.

"There's no way the damage done to this apartment could have been done by my client," he continues and takes a sip of the hot chocolate. 

Then, after his eyes go wide, he takes another, longer drink.

"Wow," he says.

"New recipe," Charles says with the same smirk. "Dark chocolate and cinnamon. I take it you like it?"

"Wow," Erik says again, and then goes back to drinking, which prevents him from saying anything else. Charles just laughs and shakes his head.

"When you're done fellating your mug, you should talk to Angel about the eviction," Charles says, and Erik would blush if he wasn't currently, in fact, trying to lick out the last drops of hot chocolate from the crevices inside the mug.

"Angel?" Erik finally says, when he decides to stop making a fool out of himself and pretend, once again, that he's an adult. "Who's Angel?"

"You know," Charles says dismissively and turns away. "Angel. You've met her half a dozen times. Latina, long dark hair, tattoos on her back and shoulders."

"Wings," Erik says. He'd seen her outside on the sidewalk once, unfurling and flexing them in the sun. He'd complimented her and she'd thanked him, and now she sometimes waved at him when she came in.

"Exactly," Charles says. He turns back to Erik holding a napkin and rolls back up to the counter. He reaches out, without preamble, and wipes Erik's mouth.

It's enough to catch Erik off guard again. He blinks.

"She went through the same thing a few months ago," Charles continues as if he wasn't just...cleaning Erik's face. What does that even mean? "She beat her landlord without even going to court. She might have some tips."

"....right," Erik finally says. 

He looks around the coffee shop to keep from looking at Charles again and spots the woman in question sitting in one of the armchairs crocheting.

She wears a lot of shiny shirts and leather jackets. He wouldn't have taken her for a knitter. He needs to be more careful about letting himself make assumptions.

Erik sits down in the armchair opposite her and she looks up.

"Yeah?" she says.

"Charles said you might have some tips for me," he says. "I have a client who's being threatened with eviction because his landlord claims his abilities are causing damage to the building."

Angel's smile goes sharp and a little mean.

"Been there," she said. "My fucker of an ex-landlord tried to get me kicked out the same way. Claimed my acid was what burned up his garden. Like acid burns are anything like fire burns."

"Can you give me fifteen minutes of your time to answer a few questions?" Erik asks. He points upstairs and she shrugs and stands up.

"I don't have anything to do until rehearsal," she says. "Why not?"

Erik begins to lead her out onto the patio and towards the stairs, already thanking her, when he feels a mental tug. He turns back to the counter, where Charles is holding out a takeaway cup.

"Another hot chocolate," Charles says. "Since you liked it so much." 

Erik takes the cup and stands there for a moment, trying to think of something to say.

"Thanks," he settles on.

"You're welcome," Charles says.

Erik wouldn't say he _flees_ after that--not at all. He's in the middle of taking Angel up to the office. That's the only reason he moves so fast.

Upstairs, he settles down at the table he's put in the main exterior office and motions for Angel to do the same as he looks through a pile of files for the relevant documents.

"Wow," Angel says. "This sure is...something."

He looks up from his pile and around the office. There are...slightly more piles than he'd normally like. It's not messy, not exactly, but for the first time in his life he seems to have accumulated clutter. A lot of it.

"I'm normally fastidious," he says gruffly, going back to searching for the document he's looking for. "But I've got more clients than I thought I would have and not enough hours in the day to file all the damn time. I'll take care of it on the weekend."

He will. He absolutely will. He's embarrassed, even, at the thought that his other clients have probably seem the place looking like this and thought the same thing, even if they were too polite to say so. He's spent his entire life keeping his space immaculately clean, but he's never had this much to do all on his own before. It's exhausting.

"Maybe you need to get a secretary or something," Angel says. Erik looks up to shoot her a remark about minding her own business, just in time to see her pull the file he's looking for from a different stack altogether. She holds it out for him.

"Is there any chance you're looking for a job?" he asks after a moment.

And that's how he hires his office manager.

***

Angel makes things easier. It's not that he gets less busy, it's just that he has more time to devote to his actual work. With Angel booking appointments and filling out paperwork for new clients, he can focus on helping. Angel does the filing, too, and keeps her eye on a few of the mutant listservs for upcoming events and news, which clears out his inbox dramatically. She's also a part-time student and a part-time burlesque dancer, which, on one hand, gets his name and services out to broader communities that he wouldn't reach otherwise, but on the other, means her hours fluctuate and Erik is, occasionally, forced to do his own dirty work.

Today, for instance, he's sitting at her computer, skimming through emails in the office inbox. The windows are open to let in the surprisingly beautiful weather. He's almost angry at how nice it is outside, given he's been predisposed to a bad mood all day. The least the universe could give him is a little rain to match his disposition. He'd taken a long weekend to visit his mother for part of Passover, closing the office for Patriot's Day at Angel's insistence and taking the train down to New York on Friday night. It's been three days with his mother, and he loves her, he does, but he's happy to be back in his office and away from her nagging questions about his lovelife and his workaholic tendencies. He's less happy that the work has piled up in his absence and it's his office manager's day off. He had seven voicemails and a really outlandish number of emails when he got in this morning, and if one more person addresses an email to "Eric," he might break something.

He's just about finished wading through the messages in the general inbox on Angel's computer when a notification he doesn't recognize pops up, a Finder window for something called "AirDrop" with a message.

_"The Coffee Gene" wants to send you "sup.docx"._

Erik stares at it for a moment. There's a message at the bottom of the Finder window that explains that someone is trying to wirelessly share a file with him, and it's only because he recognizes the name of the other computer that he clicks "Save and Open."

Microsoft Word loads and immediately displays a poorly punctuated sentence, followed by clipart of a dog wearing sunglasses.

_Will u go the out w/ me_

What. The fuck?

He stares at the stupid dog in pink sunglasses as if it has an answer. He refuses to let the tiny, bitty, _completely inconsequential_ back part of his brain swoon in delight that Charles is asking him out. It could be anyone. A dozen people use that stupid cash register computer. Any single one of them could have sent this, probably as a dumb joke.

While he's staring, a second message pops up, this one called _frap.docx_ , and he clicks on it out of morbid curiosity.

 _I'll even buy u a frappuccino_ this one says, accompanied by a picture of a cat in sunglasses.

Erik finally gathers his wits and pushes himself away from Angel's desk to stop downstairs and have words with whomever is wasting his _very valuable time_.

Despite the beautiful day, the coffee shop is quiet, stuck in that slow time between the morning rush and the lunch crowd. Their windows are open too, and he hears Sean call out, "Can you make me a frap, professor?"

"Name?" Charles asks, half-distracted.

"Swag Money," Sean says, and he goes pale as Erik shoves open the door. "Uh."

"Erik!" Charles calls cheerfully from the corner of the coffee preparation station. Very, very far away from the computer. The computer that Sean is standing in front of. "And how are you this morning?"

Erik is annoyed that his mother won't leave him alone about finding a new boyfriend, sore from too long on an Amtrak train, irritated at the amount of work that's piled up in just three days away from the office, frustrated that his return from vacation just happened to coincide with one of Angel's school days, and angry that someone is wasting his time with stupid computer tricks.

(He's absolutely not a tiny bit devastated that Charles wasn't asking him out via terrible animal macros and poorly written messages.)

"Who the hell is sending me bullshit clipart files when I'm trying to work?" he asks, though Sean's pallor and silence and position in front of the iMac speak volumes. Charles' eyebrows knit together in confusion.

"I swear to god, I didn't mean it!" Sean squeaks.

"Sean?" Charles asks.

"It was Angel's computer!" Sean insists. "I was sending them to Angel! It's like, a joke! She always gets coffee around now on Mondays and I always make it in advance and I joke about asking her out--"

"It's Tuesday," Erik says between clenched teeth. Charles is covering his mouth with one hand, looking like he's trying not to laugh. Erik hates him a little.

Sean's eyes go wide.

"Yesterday was Marathon Monday," Charles says helpfully. "You switched with Raven to take the day off."

"Whoops," Sean says. He looks beseechingly at Erik. "I swear, man, I meant that for Angel. It's a _joke_. I mean, you're like, old! And besides, everyone knows you're dating Charles, I swear I wouldn't ask you out!"

Erik's jaw drops. Behind the counter, the blender whirs to life and Charles rolls over closer to the register.

"I'm dating Charles?" Erik finally asks.

"Yeah, for like, weeks," Sean says. "I'm really, really sorry, man."

"Sean, why don't you go finish that frap?" Charles says, and Sean doesn't need any more of an excuse than that, scampering away from the cash register computer and back towards the blender. Erik reorients his blank expression to Charles, who is smiling.

"It's been going on at least since you moved in back at the end of February," Charles says. "Do you think I just give free coffee to everyone? You haven't put out yet and I'm starting to get very cross."

It's enough, at least, to snap Erik out of his shock and into indignation, which he thinks was Charles' intention.

"Only because I didn't know any better," Erik snaps. "Believe me, it will no longer be a problem."

Charles leans his forearms on the counter and smiles up at Erik sunnily.

"I'll hold you to that," he says. "Why don't you prove it to me tonight? Actually close your office at a decent hour and we'll go have dinner."

There's a brief moment in which Erik thinks about the piles of work waiting for him after his vacation and his previous disgruntled mood. Luckily, the rest of his mind shouts that part down immediately, and he finds himself nodding at Charles.

"I can do that," he says. The whole scene seems surreal, but on the off-chance it's actually happening and not just a lucid dream, it's best to go along with it.

"We can go to the Thai place across the street," Charles says.

"No," Erik says. "The last time I ate there I got sick _and_ the food was only mediocre."

"Fine," Charles says. "How about the Independent?"

Angel brought him a burger from the Independent for dinner last week. It was acceptable.

"Fine," Erik says. "I'll be down at seven-thirty."

"You'll be down at six-thirty," Charles says. "I look forward to it." Sean appears at Charles' elbow, still not making eye contact with anyone, and hands Charles a plastic cup filled with something blended and dark red. Charles takes it from him without looking and slides it across the counter towards Erik.

"Your frappuccino," Charles says.

Erik takes it, squinting at the words _Swag Money_ written on the side, and searches for something to say that won't be embarrassing.

"I'll see you at six-thirty, then," he manages, and turns around to head back to his office.

He makes it most of the way to the door before he regains enough sense to turn around and march back to the counter. He puts the frappuccino down and takes Charles' face between his hands, kissing him with no small amount of passion. If he had any illusions about catching Charles off-guard, they're quickly put to rest--Charles kisses back enthusiastically, covering Erik's hands with his own and taking over the kiss until Erik's not sure he knows his own name anymore, blinking, panting, and dizzy when Charles releases him. 

"Six-thirty," Charles says again, and all Erik can do is nod before stumbling away, nearly tripping over a table on his way to the door. "Erik!" He turns back and almost trips over the table again. "Your frappuccino," Charles says. "I wouldn't want you to think the staff of the Coffee Gene don't keep their word when exchanging beverages for dates."

He winks when Erik manages to get back to the table and swipe his drink again, and Erik's not entirely sure how he navigates his way back to his office, what with all his blood halfway to his cock, his brain still drunk on kissing, and the memory of that wink fresh in his mind, but he does it, sitting down heavily in Angel's chair as soon as he steps inside.

Six-thirty. That's ages from now. He needs to get his head on straight, get some work done, and stop behaving like a schoolboy with a crush. He needs to be an adult, not besotted.

And he will.

Any second now.

He sits at Angel's desk, drinking his frappucino and smiling like an idiot until he hears his 11am appointment coming up the stairs and he rushes for his desk. Even then, though, he has a feeling he's still smiling like an idiot.

***

They go out to dinner and Erik wastes very little time in taking Charles' hand across the table and squeezing it in his own. He's been thinking about it for weeks and now that he has permission, he's certainly not going to waste it. Charles smiles and squeezes his fingers and looks at Erik like he's a delightful toy Charles can't wait to pull apart and play with which, in retrospect, is how he's always looked at Erik.

Erik is maybe not as bright as his CV would lead one to believe.

Erik misses the last bus, but he misses it because he's in Charles' bed, curled up in the sheets, half-dozing and pressing kisses to Charles' neck and shoulders after a stunning combined five orgasms. He foresees himself missing that last bus quite a bit in the coming weeks.

"It's not that I can't stay over other places," Charles had explained as he unlocked his front door after dinner. "It's just...it's rather a chore. It's easier to come back here, where I know I have everything I need and I don't have to worry about things like making sure I can properly get onto the toilet."

Erik doesn't mind. He's been in Charles' apartment for only a few hours so far he already feels more at home than he ever does in his one bedroom in Arlington. He could get used to this feeling.

His first instinct is to bury that thought away, but he stops himself. Burying his hopes has been an act of self-preservation for as long as he can remember, one he perfected under Shaw's reign when he was trying to be the perfect student, the perfect protege, but there's no need to bury anything right now. Not about this. He's not keeping Charles at a distance anymore--he has him. He's allowed to be happy. He's allowed to want to be around him.

"Not only allowed," Charles murmurs, half asleep and obviously bleeding over telepathically, another thing he'd warned Erik about when they first arrived, "But encouraged."

"Go to sleep," Erik whispers and kisses Charles' ear, but he's grateful for the encouragement all the same.

***

Erik can't say that nothing changes after that--it would be a disservice to both Charles and himself. He is surprised by how little it changes, though, despite the fact that those little changes carry an enormous weight with them. His work day is the same, save for the fact that he's more likely to pack up at eight or nine than eleven or twelve, and his commute is just up the street, more often than not. He still has his apartment, of course, and he even occasionally goes there, but Charles' place is much more convenient.

Those after-work hours are entirely different, of course, but Erik can't say he's disappointed in that.

It's a Friday morning in early June, still cool despite a brief late-May heatwave, and Erik is stretched out on the plush loveseat in the back corner of the Coffee Gene. The shop isn't technically open yet, which means Erik's office isn't technically open yet, which means he can justify lying back, sipping his iced coffee, and tracing Charles' movements behind the counter with his eyes closed. He has a stack of work files that he brought home last night that he really should look at--a custody battle, a man looking for someone to walk him through a trip to the DMS, a woman looking for information on mutant preschools--but for the moment, he's content to relax and follow Charles around the shop.

Jean arrives around six-thirty with someone unfamiliar to Erik's powers, so he opens his eyes. It's a young boy, about her age, wearing glasses with a red tint and hovering nervously at her side. Charles waves them over to the counter.

"Scott! Lovely to see you again," he says. "I'll get out of your way in a moment--Jean's going to show you the opening routine, and once Sean comes in, you and I will go down to the office and get the rest of your schedule set up."

Erik had nearly forgotten Charles had a new person starting today. He watches the boy with interest--he keeps his glasses on, even in the dim interior of the shop. They must have something to do with his mutation. He looks up as he follows Jean behind the counter and makes eye contact with Erik for a long moment before biting his lip and looking away.

Charles rolls out from behind the counter and locks his wheels next to the loveseat, transferring over to sit next to Erik and arranging his body until he's cuddled up against Erik's side. He steals Erik's coffee and takes a sip. Erik makes a noise of protest, though it's more for show than because he cares about sharing.

"Being the boss means it's well within my abilities to make Jean take on the role of supervisor today so that I can spend some time being grossly affectionate with you," Charles says. He hands Erik his coffee and grins up at him. Erik rolls his eyes, but he wraps an arm around Charles’ shoulder and he can't say he's not grateful for the time together. 

They sit like that until Erik finishes his coffee--Charles' arm around Erik's waist, his head on Erik's shoulder--and pulls out his work cases. His office doesn't technically open for another hour, though he'll probably slip away and open half an hour early, and Charles is always eager to see what he's working on to offer his suggestions. He has quite a few this morning, particularly on the subject of mutant preschools, stealing Erik's pen to scribble recommendations in the margins of the file, and before long it's seven am and time to open the shop up, heralded by the arrival of Kitty and Illyana, the high school girls who stop by every morning to pick up mochas before school. 

Sean is right behind them, cursing and saying, "Sorry! Sorry!" as if he doesn't come in late nearly every morning.

"Don't worry, Sean," Charles says, as he does every morning. "I can pull myself away from my irresistible tennant for long enough to cover counter duty while you get ready."

"That makes this sound a lot more illicit than it is," Erik says, watching the flex of muscles in Charles' arms and shoulders as he moves back into his wheelchair.

"Nothing wrong with having a little fun with it," Charles says, and winks, before rolling away and greeting Kitty and Illyana with a cheerful hello. 

Erik begins to pack up his bag, Charles' return to work signalling his own, when he notices Scott, the new boy, hovering near the edge of the loveseat.

"Charles' office is downstairs," he says. "Take the elevator down and it's directly ahead of you."

"I know," Scott says. His eyes dart around the room behind his glasses, settling everywhere but on Erik, and then finally dragging back to make eye contact. "I want to talk to you for a moment, Mr. Lehnsherr."

Erik slowly puts his bag down and gives Scott his attention.

"I don't recall giving you my name," he says.

"I've heard of you," Scott says. "People say--my brother needs help. And he won't--he's afraid of asking for help on his own. He's afraid that if he says anything, the state will take me away."

Interesting. He had pegged Scott at eighteen at least--Jean and Sean and Ororo are all eighteen, working part time while they go to school. If he's a ward of his brother, he's under eighteen, and if he's coming to Erik, it has something to do with their mutations.

He glances over at Charles, who's chatting with Kitty and Illyana as he steams the milk for their coffee.

 _Go use my office,_ Charles says without looking away or missing a beat in his conversation. _Take as long as you need._

"Let's go talk a little more in private," Erik says to Scott. Scott nervously glances at Charles, but then nods his agreement.

They take the stairs instead of the elevator, not speaking again until they're sitting in Charles' messy, brightly lit office in the basement. Scott is sitting with perfect posture, looking at Erik dead on, but Erik can still tell how much it costs him.

"Our parents died when he was fourteen and I was nine," Scott says. "We were in foster care for a while, but then we got separated because he was having trouble controlling his powers, so he had to go to a home. He got out when he was eighteen and he convinced DCF that I should be able to come live with him, and they said it was contingent on him not having any more episodes and having a steady job. And he's good with his powers now--he can control them better, thanks to the Professor, and one of the Professor's students made him this thing that helps him focus them when he does need to use them, but he can't keep a job. And we do okay--he works at the scrap yard, breaking stuff down on the weekends, and they vouch for him to DCF, but it's not enough money for us to live on, really. And I have this job now and we live with his boyfriend and he does okay, so we're fine, but I can tell it's eating him up that he can't keep a job and I _know_ that all those people fire him because they find out about all the trouble he had as a kid, even though they say it's for other things. He doesn't want to go after them, though, because he's afraid DCF will find out and take me away."

Erik listens to it all, nodding and taking notes. It's a depressingly common story. There are a disproportionate number of mutants below the poverty line, most of whom are kept there by employers doing exactly this: firing them because of their mutations and citing other reasons in the official paperwork to avoid legal trouble. Sometimes they outright lie, but most mutants in those positions--long hours, little pay, unskilled labor--don't have the luxury of arguing.

Erik, thankfully, not only has the luxury of being able to argue for them, he takes a sharp satisfaction in it.

"How old are you?" he asks Scott.

"I just turned seventeen," Scott says. 

"You're still in high school?" Erik asks. Scott nods.

"Just for a little while though," he says. "I'm graduating early, this month. But I won't be eighteen for a whole year."

Erik purses his lips, already setting up a plan of action.

"Have your brother come to see me on Monday," he says. "Drag him if you have to. We'll fix this."

Scott smiles. The expression looks almost awkward on his face after the previous severity.

"Thank you, Mr. Lehnsherr," he says. "People said you would help but...it's hard to believe anyone will help us anymore."

"Don't thank me yet," Erik says. "Now, get upstairs and go back to work. I'm sure Charles will be looking for you."

Scott nods eagerly and disappears. Erik hears his footsteps on the stairs as he slowly picks up his bag and wanders out of Charles' office. He takes the elevator right up to his own office, making a mental list of who he's going to have to call and how he can reshuffle his current caseload to fit the Summers boys into it.

 _Hard at work already?_ Charles asks him as he steps off the elevator. _I didn't even get a goodbye kiss._

 _I'll see you at lunch,_ Erik reminds him, but he does so with a wash of affection that leaves Charles seemingly content, slipping out of his mind with a warm whisper as Erik sits down at his desk and turns on his computer.

He works until lunch and then spends an hour downstairs with Charles, hashing out a plan of attack for the custody case and ignoring the curious looks Scott keeps shooting in his direction. He goes back up to his office after, helps Angel with some filing, and closes up around eight for a late dinner out with Charles. He spends the night at Charles' place, and goes into Boston proper on Saturday for a Mutations and Mental Health community workshop. Sunday, they stay in bed until afternoon and help out around the coffee shop in the evening.

Monday morning, after his usual coffee with Charles, he waits behind his desk for Alex Summers to arrive at 9am. From Jean and Scott and Charles, Erik has come to a few conclusions about Alex and crafted his plan of action around them, but he's not sure it will work until Alex stomps into his office with Jean on his tail at ten after nine.

"Why the fuck am I here?" he says through clenched teeth, ignoring Angel and staring through the open door to where Erik is sitting in his office.

"Erik, Alex Summers is here," Angel calls dryly over her shoulder.

"Uh, I have to go back downstairs now," Jean says.

"Go on," Erik says to her. "Mr. Summers, please step into my office."

Alex Summers is, quite obviously, an asshole. Erik smiles, showing Alex all of his teeth. He loves it when a plan comes together.

Erik is careful with most of his clients. Most of them are emotional and exhausted. Most of them are frustrated and don't know where to turn. Most of them need assurances, need someone to listen to their story, someone who can relate. All of those things are against Erik's nature; he's more hard corners than soft edges. He works hard to be what they need, to take his aggression out on the system, not on them, to keep his own frustration under wraps and stay levelheaded.

It's nice, every once in a while, to get an asshole who doesn't need a shoulder to cry on so much as a kick in the ass.

"I don't know what Scott told you, but it's bullshit," Alex says, dropping into the chair across from Erik and slamming the door behind him. "I don't need help and I don't need to waste your time, I just need everyone to leave me the fuck alone."

He stands to leave, and Erik uses his watch and the studded wristband around his opposite wrist to pull him back into his chair.

"Sit," Erik says unnecessarily. "I'm not going to take your brother away from you. I'm not the government. I'm not your caseworker. I, frankly, don't care about you one way or another. I care about equality for all mutants, which means I care about rooting out the human scum who fire mutants under false pretenses more than I do about one delinquent's sob story. You know who cares about the government taking away your brother? You do. And if you want to make sure it doesn't happen, your best course of action is to listen to me."

Alex glares at him, but doesn't interrupt. 

"I'm going to give you Emma Frost's card. She's a lawyer and she hates these bastards as much as the rest of us. You will call her, you will tell her what's happened to you, and if you haven't done it by Friday, when the three of us are having lunch at 1pm in Boston, you'll pay for it. I am going to give you some papers to fill out, and while I'm going outside to get them, you're going to write down the names and addresses of all your old workplaces and supervisors so I can investigate further. One week from today, when we have everything in order, you, Emma, and I will be paying a visit to Moira MacTaggert at the Department of Mutant Services. If you speak to either of those women the way you've spoken to me today, believe me when I say they will kick your ass to the Cape and back. Do we have an understanding?"

Alex doesn't move for a moment, his expression still mulishly set, but he eventually nods once, sharply.

"Good," Erik says. He passes Alex a legal pad and a pen. "Give me those names. I'll get the paperwork."

The Summers appointment takes less than fifteen minutes altogether, but when Alex walks out, Erik feels energized and accomplished enough to go downstairs to visit Charles.

"That went well," he tells Charles, perching on a chair at the counter and sipping some strange fruit smoothie Charles has handed him. "I feel good about this one."

"You should," Charles says. "Not only is it a good thing you're doing, but it's one you've done all on your own."

"How so?" Erik asks.

"Well, this wasn't a referral, was it?" Charles says. "Normally you find clients through Moira or Emma Frost or me or Angel. Normally someone you know sends people your way. Scott didn't know you. Sure, he knows Jean and he knows me, but he heard of you on his own and he sought you out on his own. People are talking about you, Erik. You're becoming part of the community."

Erik pauses, the plastic smoothie cup raised halfway to his lips. He hasn't thought about it quite that way, and he's not sure how he feels about it. 

"Drink up," Charles says gently, reaching out to touch his wrist. "Your work's not done yet."

He's right; it isn't. He puts Charles' comment out of his mind and focuses on his schedule for the rest of the day and week and month. He may have this minor success, but the work is hardly over, after all.

***

It's still on Erik's mind later that week, lingering behind his day to day thoughts, a background hum of guilt. What has he done to earn his place in this community?

Not enough. Not nearly enough to make up for his past.

He slips out of bed on Friday night. The lunch meeting with Emma and Alex went well, and Alex recommended another few mutants who lost their jobs for similar reasons, so Emma will likely have a strong case. He suspects their Monday meeting with Moira will go just as well, but instead of feeling proud, the guilt has welled up, making sleep elusive.

Charles finds him on the back porch an hour later. It's late enough that the streets are quiet, even this close to Union Square. The only sound is the click clack of the glider, moving under Erik's powers, and the thunking of Charles' wheels as he rolls over the boards of the porch and comes to a stop next to the glider.

"The place I rented in college had one of these on the porch," Erik says. "I used to sit on it on nights like tonight, reading and smoking."

"I'm afraid I don't have any cigarettes, but I may have some weed if you'd like," Charles says. Erik turns to him for the first time, raising his eyebrows. "What? I'm not _that_ stodgy."

"You're not," Erik allows. "I'm just surprised."

"It helps me clear my head," Charles says. He puts his hand out, stopping the movement of the glider, and pulls himself up to join Erik, hissing as the cool metal touches his sleepwarm skin. "The high makes everyone's thoughts bleed together. It doesn't block them out, but it quiets them when I'm feeling particularly oversensitive."

"Interesting," Erik says. "I'll have to keep that in mind." He leans his head down to rest on Charles' shoulder and Charles embraces him as Erik sets the glider back into motion.

"You're so restless," Charles murmurs into his hair. "You have been all week. What's bothering you, darling?"

The glider drifts back and forth as Erik tries to formulate a response. There are things he still hasn't told Charles, things he's ashamed of. Charles could break his mind open and read his whole history, absorb everything that Erik is in the blink of an eye. The thought of that kind of violation makes him sick, but a part of him yearns for it. A part of him wishes Charles would do it so he would _know_ and they wouldn't have to talk about it. 

Charles kisses the crown of his head, his temple, the shell of his ear, holding him tightly in his arms. Charles is the soft edges that Erik struggles with, the warmth and honest care for other mutants. Charles may be full of himself, but he's patient and kind and Erik knows he would sit out here all night until Erik was ready to talk.

Erik sighs.

"I'm too complacent," he says.

"I wouldn't say complacent," Charles says. "Comfortable, maybe. That's not a bad thing, you know."

"I don't deserve to be comfortable," Erik says. "Not yet."

"Why would you ever think that?" Charles asks. "You're amazing. Sometimes I can't even believe you're real."

It's on the tip of his tongue, a deluge of words about his life before moving to Boston, about college, about his internship, about his debt to Shaw, about the things he knows he's done and the things he suspects he played an unknowing part in.

But the night is so beautiful and peaceful and Charles is holding him so tenderly. He doesn't know that Charles would reject him if he knew--Erik's working so hard to make up for it, he'd like to think Charles would recognize that--but it would certainly shatter the calm of the evening.

"There are things in my past--I've done things I'm not proud of," is what he says.

"I know I don't always agree with Emma Frost's methods, but I can't imagine anything you did for her could be that terrible," Charles says. "Legally grey, perhaps, but not unforgivable."

"Not Emma," Erik says. "Before Emma. When I lived in New York."

He doesn't say anything else. The glider slides back and forth.

"I'm here whenever you want to talk about it," Charles says eventually.

"Not tonight," Erik says. He closes his eyes.

"Okay," Charles says. "That's okay. But in the mean time...regardless of where you came from, you're doing good work here. I swear to it. It's okay to relax. It's okay to let yourself put down roots."

Erik keeps his disagreement to himself, not that it matters one way or another. Regardless of what he should do, of what he deserves, he already has put down roots here. There's no going back--he just has to go forward and make it mean something. He has to earn it.

He hopes he can.

***

It's a Thursday afternoon, and Erik is doing the _Times_ crossword puzzle--poorly--when the elevator dings behind him and Charles finally makes an appearance. He'd been downstairs on a call when Erik had come down for lunch, and while he tried not to be disappointed--he sees Charles every day, they're practically living together, and Erik doesn't have any particularly urgent cases to consult with him on--he's been following the slow arc of the hands on the stainless steel clock over the counter ever since.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry, my love," Charles says as he glides over to where Erik is seated and leans up to kiss his cheek. "I had some news. What do you say you close the office on July 4 and we have a holiday?"

"A holiday?" Erik asks, raising his eyebrows.

"Well, a working holiday," Charles amends. "There's a convention for mutant educators at Lake George over the holiday weekend and their keynote just cancelled. They called and asked if I was available and I said I'd have to get back to them, but they'll comp me a rental house for the weekend and I won't be presenting aside from the address, so I'd have plenty of free time to play tourist."

He grins encouragingly at Erik, his eyes big and pleading and Erik chuckles and shakes his head. 

"Send me the details," he says. "We'll see."

They both know it's as good as a yes.

Charles helps him finish the crossword, mostly by bossing him around and stealing the pen to change his answers, and then Erik retreats back to his office. In some ways, the work is starting to slow as they crawl into summer, but between his grant money and word of mouth bringing in new clients, he's more than getting by and he has enough to do to pass the time.

Usually, at least. It's Thursday, though, Angel is off, things are quiet, and he's avoiding doing some paperwork, so he opens his laptop and googles to try and find Charles' proposed holiday weekend getaway.

He has more than enough information to bring up the official looking homepage. He skims it briefly, quickly deducing that it's more of a convention than a conference, with less content and panels and more vendors and speeches. It's not normally the sort of thing he would bother with, but he doesn't have to attend himself--there's no reason he can't spend his mornings in bed and his afternoons and evenings running and boating and spending time with Charles.

He hasn't taken a vacation in years. It might be nice. Angel was already on him to close for July 4 anyway, so he might as well do something with the time.

He clicks over to the presenters to check for familiar names. He doesn't have to look far.

_Keynote Address: TBA  
Convention Moderator: Sebastian Shaw, Wideawake_

He stares at the screen in silence until his screen flickers and he realizes it's not just the screen--it's the lights too. The air conditioner. The whole electrical system is flickering and it's because Erik is losing control.

 _Darling?_ Charles asks him from downstairs. _Are you okay? You seem distressed._

He breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth.

 _Did you know Sebastian Shaw was moderating your convention?_ he asks.

 _I saw that, yes,_ Charles replies. _The name vaguely rings a bell. He has a foundation in New York, yes?_

In through his nose, out through his mouth.

_Darling, are you okay? Can I come up?_

_Don't come up,_ Erik says, too quickly maybe. _Don't--I have to go._

He severs the mental connection by throwing up his shields. They're not much, not to Charles, but they're enough to make it clear Erik wants him out, and Charles hasn't violated that trust so far. He doesn't realize he means _I have to go home_ until he's on his feet, though, his laptop closed, his messenger bag slung over his shoulder, walking across the room to the door with purpose. He locks his office with a wave of his hand and then locks the main door to the building once he's safely on the other side of it, headed down the stairs and up the block to the bus stop single-mindedly.

He doesn't remember the bus ride or walking to his apartment, but soon he's sitting on his sofa, staring at the blank wall opposite him. The apartment is eerily quiet and he doesn't have anything in, but he's too sick to eat, anyway. He hasn't been here overnight in weeks. He's done little more than pick up clean clothes, and even that has tapered off now that half his wardrobe lives in Charles' bedroom.

He's not sure, looking around, why he came here. Solitude, perhaps. A place to panic and reflect in private, without Charles hanging over his shoulder, concerned and meddling. He can't say it's somewhere familiar, not any longer. He can't say it's somewhere he feels safe. He can't say, really, that he's ever felt safe since he was a teenager, except maybe these past two months in Charles' bed.

He was angry when he came to Boston to accept Emma Frost's job offer, but the anger only covered up the fear he felt every time he looked over his shoulder and every time he looked in the mirror. Sebastian Shaw didn't let his enemies walk away, for one thing, and for another--

It had been so simple, at first. He could never have afforded Columbia on his own, but his mother was so proud of his acceptance letter, crying and telling him how his father would have boasted to everyone in the neighborhood. And even with work study and scholarships and a part time job and loans and a meager contribution from his mother, it wouldn't have been feasible. He was ready to admit defeat. The SUNY system wasn't bad, honestly, and they were willing to pay most of the way, but the prestige of the Ivies, especially after all the shit he got in school, was so tempting.

And then Sebastian Shaw entered the picture and the answer seemed obvious.

A full scholarship, Shaw said. Not a loan. Not money to be paid back. Shaw would pay for four years of Columbia in full, and in return, he only asked that Erik intern for him at his foundation, Wideawake, during the summers. Erik normally worked for pocket money during the summers, but he was more than willing to trade that for his tuition, board, books, and fees paid in full. His mother wept and called it a miracle. It was enough to almost make Erik agree with her.

And it was fine at first. The first few summers, he did light office work. The summer before his senior year, though, Shaw took Erik on as a personal assistant. He went with Shaw to meetings, took minutes, and was introduced to people influential in state governments as Shaw's protege. He liked it. He's not ashamed to admit that, at twenty-one, being praised by a man as powerful and well-regarded as Shaw made him feel good. It felt good, too, to be helping his own kind. That was what he was ultimately doing, Shaw reminded him daily. He was protecting the rights and the future of mutants, just like him.

He'd planned to go to grad school at first, to get a master's in social work with a concentration in mutant services, but Shaw had other plans for him. He encouraged Erik to put his dreams on hold. After all, Shaw would be more than willing to pay for Erik's master's degree if he could prove to Shaw it would be worth it. Plus, working with Shaw's mutant legal advocates would give him more direct service than any schooling could offer. It was a challenge Erik couldn't pass up, even as he was sinking deeper into the backroom dealings of Wideawake.

It wasn't all photo-ops and charity events. Money changed hands frequently, secretly. People were brought to Wideawake at night, against their wills, and spent hours in the back office with Shaw. And Erik's work with the legal team--some of the mutants were honestly innocent, yes, but others--Erik could see why they were behind bars. He wasn't sure he wanted them back on the street.

Every morning, he listened to Shaw's anti-human rhetoric at staff meetings, Shaw's smiles and affable charm and friendly language doing less and less to hide the destruction in his heart as time went on. And every day that went by made it harder to break away. The more he saw, the more he could justify breaking away, and the less he was certain he could. He knew too much. He was complicit. He may have been helping other mutants, but at what cost?

He can't sleep that night, even once he finally gets off of the couch and crawls into his musty-smelling bed. He stares at the ceiling and the walls and tries to think of anything else, but he closes his eyes and sees Charles' name next to Shaw's in a program, imagines them standing on stage together, imagines them shaking hands, and he feels sick. He doesn't want Shaw to touch Charles. He hardly thinks _he_ is worthy of touching Charles after all he's done, but to have Shaw so close--

He turns off his phone alarm before it can ring at five am and takes a long, hot shower. It doesn't do as much to clear his head as he'd like, but he needs to get dressed if he wants to make his bus to work. He can't avoid it forever--he has responsibilities. He's lucky he had no appointments yesterday afternoon, but he definitely has someone coming in at eleven today, and work that needs to be done. He can't hide away forever.

Plus, he's certain that if he doesn't come in today, Charles will come out here and find him.

He's forgotten how empty the bus is this early in the morning. The short commute from Charles' apartment has spoiled him. He never even bothered to buy a T pass for June, and he's left paying for his bus ride in loose change, acutely embarrassed when he taps his card and the machine beeps a shrill error at his empty balance.

He walks up from the corner slowly. It's still early enough that The Coffee Gene isn't open to the public, and he doesn't want to slip inside on his own. He's not sure yet, what he needs to say to Charles, so he bypasses the entrance and climbs the stairs to his own office.

Of course, Charles has never been one to do things on anyone's schedule but his own. Erik opens the door to his office and sees Charles sitting at Angel's desk. There are two takeaway cups of coffee in front of him.

"Good morning, my love," Charles says. "I missed you last night."

Erik quietly closes the door behind himself.

"I missed you too," he admits. He sits down at the chair across from Charles. The cup sitting at the place has a heart drawn on it. Erik wants to roll his eyes at the sentimentality, but he brushes his thumb over it instead and thinks about the way his chest tightens when he sees Charles. 

"I don't think I've ever told you that I love you out loud," Erik says. "I know I haven't. I haven't said it, because then you might say it back and it would feel like a lie, since there's so much about me you don't know."

"I know all I need to," Charles says. "And I do love you. You bloody idiot."

Erik sips his coffee. Dark roast, with cinnamon and nutmeg and something else. It's hot enough to burn his tongue. 

"Tell me about Sebastian Shaw, Erik," Charles says.

Erik takes a long drink of scalding coffee.

"When I was in high school, my father died," Erik says. Charles knows that much. "And we had enough to get by, but college acceptance time came and--I applied a lot of places that accepted the common application, just to see. I got into Columbia. And it was harder to walk away from that than I thought it would be. We could never have afforded it, but Sebastian Shaw and Wideawake stepped in and offered me a full scholarship in exchange for promising four summers worth of internships. I couldn't say no."

Charles nods and sips from his own cup, though his eyes remain focused on Erik.

"It was fine at first, and then I graduated and he offered to pay for grad school if I worked for him a little longer. So I did. And things weren't--I started to find out about the type of organization Wideawake was, behind the scenes. They were doing good work for mutants, but it was at a cost. Bribery and intimidation. Blackmail. Things that happened behind closed doors that I wasn't privy to. And Shaw would just give these speeches that were--hateful. But they didn't seem that way. They seemed logical at the time. Calm and nuanced about how mutants were the superior race and time would show that mutants are meant to live on and humans are meant to die out."

Charles presses his lips into a thin, hard line, but he nods again, encouraging Erik and keeping his thoughts about Sebastian Shaw to himself for the time being.

"When I started to get restless and went to Shaw with my problems, he would tell me I was buying into the mutantphobic system," Erik continues. "He would say that my dreams of working in mutant services were moot because the current system was run by human bureaucrats and if I tried to work within it, I would be just as bad. It would be as good as supporting them. He reminded me of all the good work I was doing for him, take me out to meet mutants I had helped. It's hard to turn your back on a group when you're sitting in someone's kitchen listening to them cry about how much it had helped them, you know?"

"You did leave eventually, though," Charles says, and it's Erik's turn to nod.

"It got to a point where--I was doing more and more of the dirty work," Erik says. "And I don't mean like--what I did for Emma, investigating billionaires and bugging phones of dirtbags, that's nothing. Those people deserved it. With Shaw, I was handing over bribes. I was tailing innocent people so we would know where they were when Shaw sent his thugs. Playing lookout when Shaw locked himself in his office with politicians he'd literally had one of his goons pull from their beds. It was all bad. But then one day the person he told me to tail was Moira MacTaggert and I couldn't do it. I _knew_ her. We were in school together. She was human, but she's so dedicated to the mutant cause. She was a regional director for Children's Services in the New York Mutant and Youth Services Division and he wanted me to follow her and intimidate her so he could send some people to rough her up into resigning so their person could be given her job."

He needs another drink of coffee. He closes his eyes and breathes. In through his nose. Out through his mouth.

"I went to her, but I didn't tail her. I didn't intimidate her," he says. He opens his eyes. "I told her what was going on and I told her to watch her back and I went back to Shaw and I quit. Emma Frost had been on me for years to get out, ever since Shaw introduced us at some party. She gave me the job at Frost and Leland and Pierce and I was in Boston three weeks later but...."

"But nothing," Charles says. "You got yourself out of a bad situation. You started over. That's to be commended."

"I never should have stayed that long," Erik says. "In college, I had no idea, but once I was out--I knew what I was doing. I even believed it, for a time."

"Yes, because a charismatic man, a man whom you looked up to as a father figure after the death of your own father, told you it was true," Charles says. He reaches across the table and takes Erik's hand, touching him for the first time that morning. "Erik, you have nothing to be ashamed of."

Erik may have saved Moira--who took a better job in Boston not long after the incident with Shaw--but how many other people did he allow to fall prey to Shaw's tactics, in the name of mutant rights?

"I could have done better," Erik says. "I could have done more."

"We've all done things we're not proud of," Charles says. "You've grown and you've learned."

"I let down my people," Erik says. "By being party to that--I have a lot to make up for."

"You moron," Charles says. He squeezes Erik's hand and lets out an exasperated laugh. "You've made up for it tenfold. Erik, do you realize what a difference you've made in this community?"

"It's not enough," Erik says.

"Oh, quit it with the self-deprecation, Erik," Charles says. He lets go of Erik's hand and wheels towards the elevator. "Come downstairs."

"Charles," Erik says, but he has trouble denying Charles what he wants, and soon enough they're taking the elevator downstairs. It's just past seven, now, and The Coffee Gene is open for business already when the doors slide open on the ground floor.

"Good morning, Charles!" Jean calls cheerfully from the counter. "Good morning, Erik!"

"Good morning, Jean," Charles says. To Erik, he gestures around the room. "Tell me that there is a single person in this room you don't know. Tell me there's a single person here, right now, in this building, that hasn't benefited from you as a part of this community."

Erik begrudgingly looks.

Armando and Alex are seated at the counter, sharing a bagel while Scott hands them both coffees. Alex waves awkwardly when he catches Erik looking and Erik waves back. On the loveseat are Kitty and Illyana, dressed in their yoga clothes to prepare for their class around the corner, a mutant-only yoga series being run by Angel this summer at Erik's suggestion. Raven is changing the specials on the chalkboard against the wall, talking to Mrs. Perry, with whom Erik went to a series of DCF meetings to advocate that despite her occasional problems controlling her telekinesis, she was still a good parent. Bobby Drake's parents were looking for a mutant-friendly synagogue once he manifested and Erik was able to pass on a list. Betsy Braddock needed help getting her brother in to see a psychiatrist with a mutant specialty. Mr. Bishop needed someone to go with him to the Department of Mutant Services to read through some paperwork for him.

"You're doing personal, direct service work, Erik," Charles says softly, taking his hand again. "You're changing these people's lives. And no matter what you've done, no matter what you think you have to prove, you're an asset and a blessing. You're not letting anyone down. You're making us all very proud."

Erik swallows against the sudden slickness in his throat and squeezes his eyes shut. He holds Charles' hand tightly in his own and breathes deeply, trying to recenter himself around his swelling heart.

"Charles," he manages to say, the word not quite as unsteady as he imagined it would be.

" _I'm_ very proud," Charles says, and Erik leans down and takes Charles' face between his hands to kiss him, before he does something even more embarrassing, like cry in public.

"There are all sorts of other details," Erik says quietly when he pulls away. "Things--nothing as bad, but things I'm not proud of."

"You can tell me tonight," Charles says, stroking his hair off of his forehead. "You can buy me a bottle of wine and bring it home for dinner this evening to apologize for disappearing last night."

"I can do that," Erik agrees.

"But for now, we should both get to work," Charles says. "There's a community counting on us, after all."

Erik smiles, still holding Charles' face between his hands.

"I suppose there is," he says. 

Still, there's plenty of time to kiss Charles one last time before he goes to see to the work that's waiting for him.

***

In fifteen hours, Erik will be on a plane to San Francisco for the first vacation he's taken since he was a child. 

It's understandably hard, then, for him to focus on the paperwork in front of him.

"You have to do it," Angel calls in from the front of the office, as if she's added telepathy to her impressive list of mutations. "If you don't fill out those papers, I don't get paid while you're gone and I will hunt you down and make your life miserable."

"I'll help," Alex adds.

"You'll finish filing that shit first, minion," Angel says.

"I'm doing it!" Erik calls back. "Really!"

Any second now. Once he pulls his mind away from a week away with Charles exploring a new city and doing all the stupid, touristy things couples in love are supposed to do on their vacations.

He really is about to write out the payroll information for the next week when his computer chimes at him. He glances up at the new message, an AirDrop Finder menu.

_"The Coffee Gene" wants to send you "how much.docx"._

He hits "Save and Open," and Word takes a moment to power up before displaying a blank document with a picture of a bear wearing sunglasses.

_If a frap gets a date, how much for a week away?_

Erik smiles and a quick google later, he's pasting a picture of a bunny wearing sunglasses into a new file and typing in, _An iced coffee, a danish, and a kiss._

He sends the file back and gets up from his desk, stretching before jogging out to the front door.

"Payroll paperwork!" Angel barks at him, pointing angrily with a sharpie.

"When I get back," Erik says.

"Sneaking away to make out with Charles is not an excuse to get out of this. If you don't do it, I'll write us our own checks and you won't like the results!" Angel warns him.

"I'm not sneaking away to make out with Charles, I'm going down to get coffee," Erik says.

"Same thing!" Angel calls before he closes the door on her.

He enters The Coffee Gene just in time to hear Sean call out, "Macneto?"

"That's for me, Sean," Charles says. He's not behind the counter, but rather already sitting in front of it, next to Erik's usual seat.

"For me, you mean," Erik says. There's already a danish waiting for him, and he waves at Kitty and Betsy and Bobby and Raven as he crosses the coffee shop to take his seat.

"For me to give to you," Charles says. "I wouldn't want you to take it from Sean, if that means he gets to be the one to take you to California for a week."

"Is Sean going to kiss me, too?" Erik asks.

"Hey, leave me out of your gross old person dating stuff," Sean says, but Erik doesn't pay him any mind, focused as he is on Charles' sly smile.

"I hope not," Charles says, and then leans in to kiss Erik himself. Erik holds him close for another kiss and one more before letting him go to stop this from going further than is probably advisable in public. Charles hands him his coffee and slides the plate with the danish closer to him.

"Thank you," Erik says. "I suppose I have to hold up my end of the bargain and fly out west with you."

"I suppose you will," Charles says. Erik can't help his affectionate grin, even as he sips his iced coffee. Something about it tastes familiar, and once he puts it together, he frowns.

"Is something wrong?" Charles asks.

"No," Erik says slowly. "It's just...medium dark roast with cinnamon. This is the same coffee you gave me when we first met." Charles has never made him a repeat coffee before.

"It's iced," Charles says. "That makes it completely different. Don't worry, darling, I have enough ideas in me to keep you in new coffee for a long, long time."

"That sounds like a challenge," Erik says. He means it as a joke, but when Charles looks up at him, he's as serious as he's ever been.

"More like...a promise," Charles says. His expression is half hope, half nerves, with none of the arrogance Erik is used to seeing. 

"I'll hold you to it," Erik says quietly, and Charles' responding grin is so blinding Erik has to kiss him again.

"Ew," Raven says from behind them. "Don't you two have jobs?"

Erik rolls his eyes as he breaks away and takes another drink of his coffee, flipping her off with his free hand.

"Actually," Kitty says. "I have a question, Mr. Lehnsherr. Angel said that you know all about all the mutant scholarships and I have a bunch that I'm applying for, but my parents want to make sure I haven't missed any."

"I do," Erik says. "Why don't you come upstairs with me and I'll find you a list?"

"Great!" Kitty says, and jumps to her feet. Erik collects his coffee and danish and leans over to kiss Charles one last time.

"Sorry," he says.

"No, no," Charles says. "I understand. The work is never finished."

Erik waves to Charles and the other regulars as he follows Kitty out to the stairs, and smacks Raven good-naturedly as he goes past. He looks around the coffee shop and smiles.

His work really _is_ never finished. And he hopes it stays that way for a long time.


End file.
